Confessions of a Reformission Rev. | Mark Driscoll

Mark Driscoll. Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church. Zondervan, 2006. 208 pp.

Ten Curious Questions

This book is about the hard lessons we have learned at Mars Hill Church in Seattle (www.marshillchurch.org). Writing this book caused me to reflect on our past and subsequently conjured up a horrendous feeling eerily similar to seeing my high school yearbook photo in which I sported a soccer-rocker mullet. Like me, most people prefer not to dwell on past moments of folly, embarrassment, or failure. But the providential hand of a gracious God commonly uses exactly such occasions to shape ministers and their ministries.

At each step of the crazy journey God has had us on, we have made mistakes that should have killed us. But God has continually saved us from ourselves and, like the perfect Father that he is, has taught us important lessons.

Before we get started, I want to ask you a handful of questions that I continually ask myself to ensure that our church remains faithful to Jesus and his mission in our city. These questions will help provide us a common jargon for understanding one another. They are intended to help clarify your church’s identity, gospel, mission, size, and priorities.

Question 1

Will your Rev. require reformission?

In my previous book, The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out, I explained the growing reformation of what it means to be a Christian missionary. Missions once solely meant sending American Christians into foreign lands and cultures to live among the people there and to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to them in a relevant way. But reformission also seeks to determine how Christians and their churches can most effectively be missionaries to their own local cultures.

Reformission, therefore, begins with a simple return to Jesus, who, by grace saves us and sends us into reformission. Jesus has called us to (1) the gospel (loving our Lord), (2) the culture (loving our neighbor), and (3) the church (loving our Christian brothers and sisters). One of the causes for the lack of reformission in the American church is that various Christian traditions are prone to faithfulness on only one or two of these counts. Consequently, when we fail to love the Lord, our culture, and our church simultaneously, reformation ceases, leaving one of three holes: the parachurch, liberalism, and fundamentalism.

• Gospel + Culture - Church = Parachurch

First, some people become so frustrated with the church that they bring the gospel into culture without it. This is referred to as the parachurch and includes evangelistic ministries such as Young Life and Campus Crusade for Christ. The parachurch has a propensity to love the Lord and love its neighbors but not to love the church.

• Culture + Church - Gospel = Liberalism

Second, some churches are so concerned with being culturally relevant that, though they are deeply involved in the culture, they neglect the gospel. This is classic liberal Christianity. Liberal Christians run the risk of loving their neighbors and their Chris¬tian brothers and sisters at the expense of loving their Lord and his gospel.

• Church + Gospel - Culture = Fundamentalism

Third, some churches are more into their church and its traditions, buildings, and politics than they are the gospel. Though they know the gospel theologically, they rarely take it out of their church. This is classic fundamentalist Christianity, which flourishes most widely in more independent-minded, Bible-believing churches. Fundamental Christians are prone to love their Lord and their brothers and sisters but not their neighbors.

The only way out of these holes is repentance, which enables reformission. Through repentance, Christians and churches are empowered by the Holy Spirit to simultaneously love the Lord, love their neighbors, and love their Christian brothers and sisters.

• Gospel + Culture + Church = Reformission

Reformission combines the best aspects of each of these types of Christianity: living in the tension of being culturally liberal yet theologically conservative Christians and churches who are absolutely driven by the gospel of grace to love their Lord, their neighbors, and their fellow Christians. This book is a painfully honest chronological account of our church’s reformission and how it caused us to grow from 0 to 4,000 people in eight years.

Question 2

Will your church be traditional and institutional, contemporary and evangelical, or emerging and missional?

. . . This book is about our church, Mars Hill, which is an emerging and missional church because that is the most effective church form for reaching the city of Seattle, to which God has called us. I believe that the emerging and missional church will eventually dis¬place the contemporary and evangelical church in much the same way that it displaced the traditional and institutional church. . . .

The point is not that one of these church forms is good and the others are bad. Rather, one is likely more effective for reaching the people in your local culture than the other forms are. Therefore, those using one church form need not critique the other forms as long as all are faithful to the functions mandated for the church in Scripture.

Question 3

Will your church be an emergent liberal church or an emerging evangelical church?

The emergent church is part of the Emerging Church Movement but does not embrace the dominant ideology of the movement. Rather, the emergent church is the latest version of liberalism. The only difference is that the old liberalism accommodated modernity and the new liberalism accommodates postmodernity. . . .

Question 4

Will you proclaim a gospel of forgiveness, fulfillment, or freedom?

Question 5

Will your church be attractional, missional, or both?

Question 6

What size shoe will your church wear?

Question 7

Will your church have a mission of community or be a community of mission?

Question 8

Will your leaders work from guilt or conviction?

Question 9

Do you have the guts to shoot your dogs?

Question 10

Can you wield a sword and a trowel?

Taken from pp. 14-35 of Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church by Mark Driscoll, copyright © 2006 by Mark Driscoll. Used by permission of Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI 49530. All rights reserved.

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